“Lock-on, Andy! Break right!”
Checking his rear-view mirror, he saw the flare of rocket exhaust circling the dark hole of the missile body, and he jinked the plane hard to the right, climbing, but could not lose his deadly pursuer.
The missile went right up his starboard tail pipe.
And did not detonate. It was a Soviet Union version of a dud.
The aerial collision still disintegrated his right Pratt and Whitney TF30, shredding the fuselage and wing with snapped turbine blades. The F-lll skidded and bucked, then started vibrating violently. Red warning lights lit up the instrument panel like the Las Vegas Strip. He killed power on the right engine. A quick stab at the transmit button told him he had lost his radios. Vital electrical and hydraulic arteries had been severed.
Wyatt jettisoned his bomb load and his drop tanks in the middle of the harbour and retarded the port throttle, which eased the vibration. Making a slow 180-de-gree turn, he limped the airplane back to the west as far as Laos. Ruskin stayed with him all the way and circled when Wyatt could no longer keep the F-lll airborne, and he and Adair ejected over a rice paddy. They were picked up by helicopter within an hour, and Wyatt woke up the next morning with the first strands of grey showing at his temples.
He was fully grey-headed by the end of 176 missions and his third tour.
On Thursday morning, he was up by five-thirty to run through his twenty minute regimen of sit-ups, push-ups, and deep-knee bends. Wyatt’s six-foot frame of hard muscle was probably in better shape than it had been twenty years before, but it took increased effort to keep it at the level he wanted. After exercising, he showered, washed his hair, and shaved. It took him five minutes to dress in slacks and a blue sport shirt and to pack his single carry-on bag. Wyatt carried the small bag and the larger one containing his flight gear down to the Holiday Inn’s desk and checked out, paying in cash. Everyone was supposed to pay in cash. He bought a copy of the Phoenix Gazette and went looking for breakfast.
Barr was already in the coffee shop, working away at four eggs and two breakfast steaks. He grinned as Wyatt took the chair opposite him. “Morning, boss.” Wyatt poured himself a cup of coffee from the insulated plastic pot on the table. “You look amazingly alive. How was Nogales?”
Bucky Barr and two of the others had crossed the border the night before to analyse the current level of Mexican revelry.
He reported, “In a world of change, Nogo doesn’t. Same varieties of debauchery.”
Wyatt ordered an omelette guaranteed to contain extra jalapeno peppers and read the paper while he waited for the rest of his team. From Tokyo to Beirut to Washington, the world was in typical disarray. A little greed, a little power-grabbing, a lot of fanaticism.
By six-thirty, they had all stacked their soft-sided luggage in the lobby and were gathered at two tables, urging their beleaguered waitress to greater speed. In addition to Barr, Demion, and Kriswell, there were four more faces. Norm Hackley, Dave Zimmerman, Cliff Jordan, and Karl Gettman had flown in commercially from Albuquerque the previous afternoon. Hackley and Gettman were the two Barr had cajoled into joining him for his Mexican spree. Both were droopy-eyed this morning and particularly fond of ice water and orange juice.
Zimmerman, a clean-cut, sandy-haired man of twenty-eight, was the youngest pilot in Wyatt’s group. He had been an F-15 Eagle jockey for the USAF until eighteen months before. He leaned toward Wyatt’s table and said, “Beats the hell out of me, Andy, why these old fossils, who are supposed to be wise veterans of life, can’t grasp some simple truths. I’ve learned that there’s a direct correlation between the night before and the morning after.”
“Go flub a duck, Davie boy,” Gettman muttered.
Barr, who was never affected by mornings-after, said, “The truth, Dave, is that the night before is worth the morning after.”
“Selfish bastard,” Gettman told Barr. “You always speak for yourself.”
“I knew there was a truth in there, somewhere,” Norm Hackley said, “but I think it’s only a half-truth.”
“Do you guys realize you all sound incoherent?” Wyatt asked.
“Now, there’s a truth,” Zimmerman said.
“You should have heard them last night, you want incoherence,” Barr said.
“I especially don’t want incoherence today. I want bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
He got nods in response, but some of them seemed half-hearted.
Wyatt folded his paper and surveyed his group. All of them were employees of his Aeroconsultants, Incorporated, and he was fond of them all. Except for Zimmerman and a few of the technicians back in Albuquerque, he had served Air Force time, somewhere in the world, with all of his people.
After the waitress had brought yet two more coffeepots, Wyatt briefed them. “Bucky, Cliff, and I will take the F-4Es. Jim, you get the Herc, and Tom will ride in the right seat for you.”
Demion had multiengine and jet ratings on his private license, though he had never flown for the military except as a peripheral activity in consulting for them. His interest was secondary to his profession of aeronautical engineering.
Kriswell was not a pilot. He had abandoned pursuit of a flying license after his first landing on his first solo flight in a Cessna 182. He had managed to leave part of the propeller and the landing gear a few hundred yards away from where the airplane finally came to rest.
“You get to handle the Thermos, Tom,” Demion said. “No touching the yoke.”
“Can I play with the throttles?”
“If you’re real good,” Demion promised.
“The rest of us are here to sightsee?” Hackley asked. “Nope,” Wyatt told him. “I only pay you to work. I’ve got a couple F-4Ds for Dave and Karl. Norm, you get a C model.”
“Shit. The slowest one of the bunch, no doubt. Anybody want to flip a coin?”
“No trades. The hydraulics are a little iffy on your bird, Norm, and if there are any problems, I want your experience in the cockpit.”
Mollified, Hackley — who had F-4 combat hours — shrugged and said, “Ho-kay.”
“Our destination is Ainsworth.” Wyatt had not mentioned that to any of them before.
“What the hell’s an Ainsworth?” Barr asked.
“And where in the hell is it?” Hackley added.
“It’s in north central Nebraska. Just under a thousand miles, and we can make it in one hop.”
“Nebraska in mid-July?” Barr complained. “You’ve got to be shitting us, Andy.”
“The sandhill cranes like it.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet the crane population is composed of two genders,” Barr said.
After the last of the coffee was drained from their cups, the group made last pit stops and then carried all of the luggage out into the dry heat of morning and dumped it into the trunks of two taxicabs. Thirty minutes later, they hauled it into the operations office at Davis-Monthan and stacked it against a wall opposite the counter.
Wyatt figured that all of the right telephone calls had been made and most of the objections overcome because he could see his seven aircraft lined up on the tarmac about a quarter-mile away. A fuel truck, three start carts, several pickups, and a dozen men were clustered around them.
They waited, milling around, hitting the Coke machine.
Captain Dinning arrived at eight-fifteen wearing a haggard smile and carrying a four-inch-thick folder. He dropped it on the counter and said, “You don’t know what I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours, Mr. Cowan.”
“I’ve got a fair idea, Captain. And all of it in quadruplicate, too.”
Bucky Barr asked, “Did we get all of the tail numbers we asked for?”